The £7.9m deal, which also includes the sale of Eleco’s South African timber engineering business International Truss Systems, comes just months after Eleco sold its Liverpool-based timber frame manufacturing arm Eleco Timber Frame to start-up timber frame business ETF Northern Ltd.

 Gang-Nail’s business includes the manufacture of connector plates for the roof truss, fencing, pallet and crate manufacturing industries, as well as the Ecojoist metal-web/timber flange joist brand. The deal does not include the Consultec brand of timber engineering software, including StairCon for the staircase production sector.

“From our perspective, the acquisition increases ITW’s market share in the UK within the engineered wood products sector,” Paul Walsh, general manager of ITW Industry UK and Ireland, told T&SB.

 “Alpine and Gang-Nail were competitors before, now they’re not. There are some similar products and technologies but both companies will have independence with their own customer bases.”

Mr Walsh said ITW would still operate both software platforms, but hinted at future opportunities of product developments involving both brands.

ITW intends to operate both the Ecojoist and Spacejoist open-web joist systems, making it one of the leading system suppliers in the open-web sector.

“This [acquiring Ecojoist] certainly puts us up there,” added Mr Walsh. “If we are not number one with the two systems combined then we are certainly joint number one.”

Mr Walsh said the Code for Sustainable Homes, increasing demand for more electrics in homes and more timber frame companies looking to produce closed panel systems were drivers of demand for open-web joists.

John Ketteley, Eleco executive chairman, told T&SB about 41 UK Gang-Nail staff and the Aldershot base of Gang-Nail would transfer to ITW.

“This deal takes us out of timber engineering,” he said. “It is right for Eleco, it’s a good fit for ITW and most importantly it’s right for the staff.”

Eleco's timber engineering businesses posted a pre-tax profit of £900,000 for the 12 months ended June 30, 2011. The net asset value as at June 30 was £1.9m. 

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